Birthday
by Ashley A
Summary: future fic. Buffy writes in her journal on the occassion of her Thirtieth birthday.


A/N:  future fic.  Buffy writes in her diary as the dreaded thirtieth birthday looms.  Sappity sap sap!

Disclaimer:  Don't own them.  Joss and ME do.  Thanks for letting me play here.

Feedback please yes!

This is a birthday present to myself.  Long live B/A!

Enjoy.

Birthday.  Not a word I normally associate good memories with.  Let's see.  Seventeenth.  Consumated a fiery relationship.  He left me.  Eighteenth.  Lost slayer powers, was betrayed by trusted ally.  Okay, nineteenth wasn't too bad.  But to think back on college, on Riley right now still isn't easy.  Twentieth and beyond sort of just blocked out.

But this time it's a big one.  Thirty.  Wow.  Never thought I'd make it.  Literally of course.  Most slayers lived to be around 21 or so.  So I'm the old lady of the bunch.  Of course now with most of the demons and denizens of hell under control and the various hellmouths being watched over by loads of young slayers, what do I have to worry about?  I can just be the matriarch, sit in my rocking chair, and talk about the days when Willow, Xand, Giles, Angel and I fought evil alone.  

There's a name that still makes every hair on my body stand on end.  I feel so conflicted even thinking about him still, and those old emotions race to the surface, ready to make me feel seventeen again.  And oh so in love.  So in love I thought I would die if he wasn't touching me every second.  Fighting back to back.  Patrolling.  Hell, just walking holding hands made my heart sing and my never ending fight a little easier.

But as time passes, the bad memories fade.  I experienced so much the seven years I was guardian of my particular hellmouth, that it's hard to wrap up my time there in a few words.  But I can try.

First year:  newbie.  Fear.  Books!  Willow and Xander.

Second year:  Angel.

Third year:  Graduation.  Faith.  Forgiveness.  Goodbye.

Fourth:  new beginnings.  College.  Adam.  Riley.

Fifth:  Goodbye again.  So many times.  Mom.  Riley.  And hello, too.  Dawn.  Glory.  The tower.

Sixth:  Spike.  Songs.  Magic.  Heaven and Hell.

Seventh:  Feeling so old, yet so new again.  Empowerment.  New job.  New problems.  Blood in, blood out.  Giles.  Xand.  Willow.  Anya.  And Angel, again.  Cookies.

I told Willow once a few days after college had started that I was determined to prove to everyone how over Angel I was, how good I was doing without him.  And then I realized that everything always comes back to him.  Or my lack of him.  It took me several months to stop jumping when I saw any tall man with dark hair wearing a dark coat.  I started at shadows, expecting him at every turn.  

But it was never him.

He came at the right moments, though, when somehow I knew everything would be okay if he would just be there and hold my hand.  And somehow he knew, too.  And he would be there, and he would take my hand and not say a word.

The sixth year on the Hellmouth was a bad one.  Bad, bad, uberbad.  My friends and I were seperated again, by emotions and by new commitments.  

And then there was Spike.

It's funny to think back on him, and how much I actually do miss him sometimes.  Someone will say something about peaches, or bloody, or even shag, and I smile to myself.  

I'll never forget him, even if I live to be a hundred.  If I do, he will have had a hand in that.

Sacrifice is a very large word, isn't it?

As I near this new bend in my life road, somedays I look in the mirror in the hall of my new apartment, where my love and I share a space, and think back to that girl who once railed at her fate.  

I'm sixteen years old!  She had shouted.  I don't want to die.

And you know what?  I did anyway.  And I wouldn't change a thing.

Because I wouldn't be where I am now, who I am now, if any of what happened had been different.  And I'm so grateful for the experiences, for the friendships, for the hardships, the lessons, the tears, the gratitude, and most of all, the love.

Love does make the world go round, when you think about it.

I hear keys in the door, so I need to wrap this up.  God forbid he should catch me waxing nostalgic, especially when I'm this close to being **gasp** over the hill.  He'll just think I'm being a silly girl.  He'll chastise me, telling me I'm being ridiculous, that turning thirty is nothing compared to two hundred and fifty-four.

And I would answer him, it's different now.  You're different now.  You shouldn't be allowed to count the years you weren't breathing.  And he would laugh, and wrap his arms around me, pressing his face to my neck, his pulse strong in his throat, and then, in that soft voice he uses only for me, he would tell me the words I can never hear too many times.

I love you.

He's always here to hold my hand, now.  Every moment is a right moment.

And on my birthday, the day normally reserved for pain and heartache, I would smile, and tell him thank you, from this thirty year old ex-slayer and from the 17 year old girl who still resides here in my heart.

She'll always be there.

And she'll always love him, too.


End file.
